Chief minister Raman Singh | FILE
RAIPUR: The Chhattisgarh government has decided to merge all district cooperative central banks (DCCBs) of the state into a single State Cooperative Bank, aiming to serve the farmers with better and efficient banking facilities, officials said.
The cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Raman Singh here at Mantralaya today gave approval in this regard, a government public relation officer said.
In the meeting, Singh asserted that the merger of all branches of DCCBs will be one of the major financial reforms in the state.
Cooperative banks play a significant role in paddy procurement and disbursements of short term agricultural loans to farmers and in view of this, in-principle decision was taken to transform it into a mega State Cooperative Bank (Apex bank) to ensure better banking services to farmers, the CM said.
After the decision, all DCCBs will be amalgamated into one state cooperative bank, which further will enact a strong financial infrastructure and emerge as a strong bank, he said.
Although all 264 branches of the DCCBs will continue to function in the state as same as earlier but from now on will give its services as a scheduled cooperative bank, he added.
The decision will be benefit the farmers and the interest rates will come down by another 1.5 to 2 per cent on loans to them.
This will directly affect the state government’s interest subsidy, where it will be saving Rs 40-50 crore annually, the chief minister said.
Besides, the farmers will be getting modernised bank facilities at the village level along with ATM and Micro ATM services.
They can carry out transaction from any branch in any part of the state and very soon mobile banking and Internet banking facilities will be added, he said.
The working capital of the cooperative bank will cross over Rs 10,000 crore after the merger and the bank will have enough money for disbursement of agriculture loans, he said.
